by JJ Zep
"…want to be an agent?"
"I'm sorry?" I said panting. I was clearly out of condition after two years riding a desk.
"I said why do you want to be an agent?"
Now, don't get me wrong, I would love to be an SPAA agent. It beats ten kinds of crap out of working in the Accounts Receivable Department, but my understanding was that only ex cops, bounty hunters and hitmen got to work for the Agency, along with your regular assortment of Trolls, Goblins, Imps and the like.
"Why do I want to be an agent? I thought I was here for training."
"Only SPAA agents are authorized to track down runners. So in order for you to go after Finnegan we have to swear you in as an agent. The chief insisted on it."
"The chief?"
"Mr. Abaddon. He wants this official. Also, as an agent you can get out of here without too much red tape. Otherwise, Mr A. would have to get a special dispensation from the boss man."
"You mean, Beelze…"
"Don't say it!" Doppelganger hissed. "Not unless you want a dip in Fire Lake. Blasphemy's still a serious offence in these parts."
"I thought Fire Lake was just a myth?
"Don't you believe it. They can still toast you. Especially for blasphemy."
"What I don't understand though is why you need me at all? Surely the SPAA has the resources to track down Finnegan without my help?"
Doppelganger shushed me with a finger to his lips, then leaned forward and indicated for me to come closer.
"I asked myself the same question," he whispered. "Why is Adaddon so determined to send an amateur after Finnegan? Only answer I can think of is, Abaddon doesn't want Finnegan caught."
"But why, if that's the case, send someone after him at all?"
"Abaddon has to be seen to be doing the right thing. Finnegan’s escape is a big blow to the company. It's not just the revenue the company is losing or even a prestige thing. The reputation of the business as a reliable supplier is at stake. Who wants to do business with a prison where souls can just walk out on the say so of a mere clerk, and a suicide at that?"
"That's another thing," I whispered back, "I couldn't have released him even if I wanted to. I don't have the authority."
"Exactly what I thought!”
“So how…?
“Best I can come up with is this.” His voice dropped another notch. “Abbadon organizes Finnegan’s transfer from Underworld, cutting a few corners in the process, which explains the dodgy paperwork. He’s looking for a way of getting Fingers out without raising too many eyebrows when he gets to hear about your outburst, probably over a few jars with Belial. He uses that as an excuse to claim an administrative cock-up and then browbeats Belial into signing off the release form for Finnegan."
"But why is Abaddon interested in a petty crook like Fingers at all?"
"I don't know. These senior demons sow their wild oats pretty far and wide. Maybe he's just found out that they’re related."
Doppelganger straightened up and cleared his throat. "Now where were we?"
"You were asking why I wanted to be an agent."
"And your answer is…"
"I hadn't really thought about it."
"Wrong. Your answer is that you want to return Freddie Finnegan to the eternal damnation that he richly deserves. Say it."
"I want to return Freddie Finnegan to the eternal damnation he so richly deserves."
“So help you, Satan?”
“So help me Satan.”
"Then congratulations, your are now a trainee SPAA agent."
four
My SPAA training started the next day with a briefing by Special Agent Doppelganger, who immediately insisted that I call him Dope. "Everybody does," he explained, "and it will cut at least a few hours off our conversing time."
Dope then outlined the situation, (delivered the sitrep was how he put it). "Way I see it is as follows, you got yourself a runner name of Freddie Finnegan a.k.a. Fingers, small time hood from Chicago, Illinois, born 1901, deceased 1927. That's when you got to look for him. We know he's in Chicago. Where exactly is anyone's guess, but in my experience these fellers soon fall back into old ways, if you get my drift."
He motioned me closer, and dropped his voice a few notches, "You've also got yourself a lot of interest from downstairs, in the shape of Mr. Abbadon, but that's a wrinkle you're going to have to figure out for yourself."
Dope straightened up and continued, talking loudly as though for the benefit of unseen listeners. "What you got here is a pretty straight forward pursuit and jar case. Something even you should be able to manage. You know we don't normally take your sort."
"My…sort."
"Suicides. Too unreliable. Never know what they're going to do next."
"Actually, I'm not technically a…"
"Suicide. Sure just like every con whose soul ended up in this place didn't do what they’re supposed to have done."
"No seriously, I said, "It was a…"
"Accident?"
"It was a bet."
"A bet? At least that's original. Show me your wrists." I held them out, and he examined them. "Mmm, I figured you for a cutter.” He sounded disappointed. “So what was it pills? Gas?”
"It was a fall.”
“A fall? How high? You look in pretty good shape.”
“A fall from the roof of a bungalow.”
“Hardly seems enough to…”
“Straight into a swimming pool…”
“Even more so…”
“An empty swimming pool…”
“Ah…”
I woke up with Belial screaming at me to quit slacking and get back to work."
"Bummer," Dope said.
After the briefing Dope took me down to level U14 and introduced me to an agent by the name of Jitterbug, a red-faced imp with a pair of stubby horns. He wore a green t-shirt with the caption 'I shot Cock Robin', and a picture of the unfortunate red breast lying prostrate with an arrow sticking out of his chest. He wore no bottoms, neither did he need to - his legs were densely furred and terminated in a neat pair of hooves. A red whistle dangled from a string around his neck, and a clipboard was jammed under his arm.
"How's your swimming skills, Blackwell?" Jitterbug asked. His voice was high pitched, and with all the good humor of a schoolyard prank.
"Pretty good," I said, "I was on the swimming team in high school. Backstroke."
"I doubt that's going to be too useful here," Jitterbug sniggered. He crooked a finger, did a little jig and motioned for me to follow. After navigating a complex maze of corridors we arrived at a large chamber, well lit and humid. In the middle of the chamber was a swimming pool. I say pool, simply because of the rectangular shape. A better description would probably be an Olympic sized lake. The water was gray green, with a thin sheen of bubbly algae in places. There were swirls and eddies as if the pool were driven by underwater currents. The surface was dotted here and there by plastic bags, dead branches, bottles and other bits of flotsam.
"Jump right in, whenever you're ready," Jitterbug instructed.
"What? Into that?"
"Well, I didn't mean into the air. Whenever you're ready." Jitterbug folded his arms and made an exaggerated gesture of tapping his hoof.
I started unbuttoning my shirt. "No, no," Jitterbug said. "Just as you are."
"You want me to jump into that?"
"Yes."
"In these?" I said, indicating my clothes.
"Of course in these," Jitterbug said impatiently.
"Why?"
"Because I'm the instructor and I say so."
"But why in my clothes."
"It's important to your mission. I can't tell you any more. Now, on my whistle." He placed the whistle to his lips and delivered a shrill blast, closing his eyes with the effort. I walked to the edge of the pool and looked in. Something was swimming around in there, something big. It darted through the water just below the surface, then dived deeper flashing a long tail studded with a ridge
of spines.
"There's something in there," I said.
"Oh, that's just Nessie. She's harmless."
"Nessie? You mean the Loch Ness monster?"
"You're a bit old to be believing in fairy tales aren't you, Blackwell."
"Well either way, I'm not jumping in there. Especially not with Nessie taking her morning dip."
"Okay then. I didn't want to have to do this but…" He placed the whistle to his mouth and blew two short blasts.
A pair of trolls detached themselves from the cavern wall. They were short, stocky creatures each with a face resembling a mountainside. One carried a club, the other a net. Jitterbug said something in a language I didn't understand and the trolls split off, one left and one right, cutting off any avenue of escape. The troll closest to me, the one carrying the club, approached cautiously. His companion, on the far side of the pool, moved more quickly, making up the ground. I looked at Jitterbug who was grinning through the set of steak knives that passed for his teeth. "I told you so," he giggled then rolled his eyes in mock annoyance, "Why, oh why, do they always test me?"
The club carrying troll was now less that ten feet away, no longer moving forward, but swaying from side to side and swinging his club in experimental blows, probably calculating the correct arc to make contact with my skull.
I felt a tug at my trouser leg and looked down just in time to see a tentacle, the color of dead flesh, wrap around my leg. In the next moment I was hoisted into the air and slammed into the surface of the water hard enough to make my ears ring.
Before I had time to even take a breath I was pulled under. Whatever had hold of me was diving quickly. The water felt cold and oily. Seaweed slapped at my face. The surface light began to fade. The pool was deep. I felt myself becoming light headed, blacking out.
Then suddenly there was a flash of movement to my left, a shadow slightly darker than the gray water. I was being thrown sideways as the grip on my ankle released. Immediately other tentacles grabbed me. I thrashed out and ripped free before I realized that it was only seaweed. A cascade of bubbles burst around me. I found myself being nudged upward. I broke the surface and took in huge gasps of air. Jitterbug was shouting something in his high-pitched voice. I felt myself being nudged gently towards the side of the pool then grasped by strong hands and lifted out. The trolls looked down dispassionately as I coughed and spluttered and then threw up. Jitterbug was still shouting and now I could make out the words. "Who let the goddamn Kraken into the pool?"
five
After the Kraken incident Jitterbug was surprisingly apologetic and attentive. "Now not a word of this to Doppelganger. And I promise to leave it out of my report altogether. That way you won't look silly." He lifted a hand to his mouth and giggled, although it lacked his usual zest.
"And I won't have to go into the pool again?"
"The pool, oh no. I wouldn't hear of it. We're done with the pool. Did I mention that you did excellently? I'm marking you an 'A' in my report. See." He showed me the yellow card attached to his clipboard. He looked rather proud of himself.
Jitterbug was as good as his word and the rest of my training was confined to the side of the pool. This amounted to having my ankles strapped together with a weight belt and doing bunny hops until my thigh and calf muscles felt like they were made of jello. When I told him that I thought it was all a waste of time, he assured me that it was vital to the success of my mission.
From time to time Nessie put in an appearance, raising her brontosaurus like head from the depths of the pool. She seemed to be smiling and I smiled back. She had after all saved one of my lives.
The next day’s training was at the shooting range, also on U14. My instructor was Agent Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, once a member of the Barker gang.
“You call me Creepy, and you’re going to be shedding lives faster than Superman switches outfits,” Karpis assured me. “And don’t call me agent Karpis neither. I didn’t ask to be no fed. You call me Mr. Karpis or you call me sir, geddit.”
“Yes sir,” I said quickly, Karpis didn’t look like anyone I wanted to mess with, not even with all of my allotted five lives still in tact. He was a small, stooped man with a pock marked face, sunken cheeks and stained yellow teeth. His voice was high pitched and anxious, like a teen just into puberty, or someone on the verge of a breakdown.
“You know what this is?” Karpis asked lifting something from a trestle
table, laden with weaponry.
“No, sir.”
“This here’s a Thomson Automatic Machine Gun, finest piece of firepower ever created.” He held the stubby weapon up to the light, admired it with a look bordering on ecstasy. “Ain’t nobody before or since could handle one of these like Ma, but I reckon myself a close second.”
He spun suddenly, pressed the butt of the weapon against his hip and fired off a burst. The clatter of the Tommy Gun was incredibly loud in the shooting range. Instinctively, I threw myself to the floor and covered my ears. When I got back to my feet, Karpis was standing, legs apart, the Tommy Gun cradled against his hip, a thin plume of smoke wafting from the barrel. He was wearing his unpleasant, tobacco stained smile.
“You’ll do just fine kid,” he sneered. “The way you dive for cover, ain’t nobody gonna get a bead on you.” Then he spat out a stream of tobacco juice and threw back his head in a volley of laughter that sounded not unlike the Tommy Gun.
The two days I spent with Creepy Karpis were both confusing and unpleasant but by the end of them I was borderline proficient with both the Tommy Gun and the .38 Chief’s Special. That is to say I could hit a target with either weapon, although I was nowhere near the bull and my instructor informed me that he was only passing me because he was tired of ‘playing nursemaid to a pussy’.
On day four I was summoned to Dope’s office. He was on the phone when I entered but pointed me to a chair.
“Yeah, that’s right, I said two hundred on the Slashers, you know I’m good for it. What’s that? Of course I know Johnson’s injured. No big thing - Ramirez is on a hot streak right now and we got Mac the Knife in reserve, so two hundred to win and I’ll settle with you Friday. What’s that? Yeah, ha dee ha. Everyone’s a comedian these days.” He hung up. “Bludgeonball,” he explained. “You a fan?”
“Nah, baseball.”
“Not much call for it around here.”
“Guess not”
“So, Creepy Karpis, rated you a C minus, not bad. His average is F.”
“I love Creepy too.”
“We all do.” Dope said, mock seriously. “And I see you got an A from Jitterbug, you’re turning out to be our star pupil.”
“So how about a raise?”
This time Dope laughed out loud. “One more test and we can discuss it. This instructor you’re going to love. You might say he’s the best of a bad bunch.” He gave me a wink, got up and left the room. He returned a minute later with what looked like a small fish tank. He placed the tank in the middle of his desk and retrieved a sealed packet from his coat pocket. He held this up to me for inspection. It was white and resembled a packet of instant soup. The blue letters printed on the packet said, ‘Live Sea Monkeys: Just Add Water.’
“Hey, I bought some of those when I was a kid,” I said, “I’ll save you the trouble, all you’ll get is some grey gunk that turns the water murky.”
“Oh, these work alright,” Dope said, shaking the contents into the bottom of the packet.
“Bet they don’t.”
“Five says you’re wrong.”
“Ten says I’m right”
“You’re on,” Dope said, and tore a thin strip from the top of the packet. He shook out a small quantity of grayish powder into the fish tank. Two agents entered the office each carrying a jug of water. The water was poured into the tank and instantly turned the color of a brackish river.
“Told you,” I said.
“Wait, watch and learn” Dope said.
One of the agents gave the other a ‘wat
ch this’ nudge, and grinned. We stared at the tank, which still gave no indication of clearing.
“Told you,” I said again.
Dope held up a hand, “Here we go,” he said. A bubble was rising from the bottom of the tank. All four of us leaned forward and watched its slow ascent. A second and then a third bubble started rising. The first bubble broke the surface and emitted a foul smelling steam, which escaped with a hiss.
“Whoa, who farted?” one of the agents joked.
The second and third bubbles reached the surface simultaneously and released their noxious gas. The water was clearing, and now I could make out three tadpole-like creatures swimming in the tank. As we watched, one of the creatures acquired a set of hind limbs and then a curled, monkey-like tale. The second of the three also sprouted legs while the third maintained its tadpole body and swam in a circle, apparently chasing its tail. The first sea monkey now went through a rapid growth spurt, front appendages complete with tiny hands pushed free from the body, the head took shape and a gargoyle face grinned at us revealing a miniature shark’s mouth. It darted in on the tadpole and sliced it in two with a single bite then spun round to zone in on the remaining morsel. But in its feeding frenzy, it had forgotten about the other sea monkey, which, now fully evolved, launched an attack from below. The battle was short and brutal. When it was over, only one sea monkey remained. It was about the length of a man’s thumb and did indeed resemble a monkey, albeit one with scales and the dentures of a miniature great white.
six
“You want me to put my hand into that?”
“The jar. I want you to put the jar into that.”
“Held in my hand.”
“How else?”
“In case you haven’t noticed there’s a miniature shark in there.”
“It’s a monkey for crying out loud.”
“A monkey with teeth.”
“It can’t be bigger than, what, three inches.”
“So is a piranha”
“Okay, here’s the deal, either you dip the jar into the tank and you pass. By tomorrow, you’re living it up in Chicago. Or you quit now, with all your fingers in tact, and we send you back to Belial’s psycho ward. I should also mention that’s not going to go down too well with Abbadon.”
